28. The Curse of God (End-Times Series Part 9)

Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 28, The Cursing of God. As a child who grew up on Disney, I learned that curses came from things like magic spells brought to boil in a big black cauldron that were wielded by wicked witches and shadowy towers and cast upon unsuspecting innocents.

These evil potions turned princes into frogs and princesses into ogres that would be locked away forever in castles unless a hero would arise, discovering the magical power of eroticism and other such things that would make you gag.

And then the curse could be broken by the power of love and everything would turn out right again. It was nonsense like this that made me have so much trouble understanding biblical curses because they exist and what made me wonder why God would put anyone under a curse.

I was never told that God invented blessings and curses as a feature of covenantal relationships, not as a weapon against the unsuspecting or innocent. You see, a covenant is a terms-based relationship between God and man.

It's a relationship where a holy God makes promises to dwell with a sinful people. To do that, laws must be instituted to limit human sin, sacrifices must be given to atone for that sin. And without those things, there would be no relationship with a thrice holy God.

Once that relationship had been codified, then God gave them signs to help the people remember their commitment to God and his commitment to them. These are things like circumcision and baptism. And for those who obey God's covenant, there were great blessings and favor that would end up coming upon that people.

The greatest and best blessing, of course, is that they would get to be near and to know their God. But for all of those who hated God, who spurned his commandments and who lived in opposition to his covenant, God would rain down curses upon them.

Blessings and Curses in Covenant Relationship

See, in the Bible, curses do not come from the hand of a malevolent tyrant, but a merciful king. They're not applied to good people who need to be rescued, but to a deplorable people who must be destroyed.

And the way that these curses are avoided is not through the triumph of a lovesick dragon-slaying hero, but by the loving obedience of the dragon-slaying Christ. By the time we get to Matthew 23, the people have hated God so ferociously, and they've lived in opposition to his covenant for so long that the cup of his bitter curses was about to tip over and drown them in his suffocating wrath.

There's a great need for curse. God was gracious to outline all of the stipulations and the laws and the requirements that he had for his people in the Mosaic covenant. There was no surprises or confusion.

He gave them explicit and specific commands to obey, feasts that they were supposed to attend, and sacrifices that they were supposed to offer whenever they sinned. He gave them priests to represent them before God and to mediate reconciliation on their behalf.

The point of the law was never perfect obedience lest a lightning bolt be slammed against their heads. The covenant that God made was a relationship of grace with a thousand mercies for sinners to be reconciled to God as they waited for the Christ to come and make permanent restitution.

Only those with the hardest heart would experience the kinds of curses that are laid out in chapters like Deuteronomy 28, and that, unfortunately, is exactly what happened to Old Testament and even New Testament Israel.

In that passage, Deuteronomy 28, God warns the ones who are gonna persist in covenant rebellion that they will be brought under a total and unrelenting curse, Deuteronomy 28, 14. This curse would impact their food supply.

It would poison their produce. It would kill all the livestock in their possession. It would cause a nation to be plunged into insanity, moral confusion, and chaos. It would doom their children and their children's children.

It would infect their citizens with incurable madness and diseases. It would rain down plagues upon the population and leave their soldiers dead roasting in the noonday sun. If the people did not repent after the first round of seven curses, an additional seven curses would be poured out onto the people with terrifying and increasing intensity.

That would culminate in a bitter exile where the people would be violently removed from their ancestral lands and mistreated in places that were not their homes. If they still didn't repent, even after all of that, a future nation would come and overwhelm them, besieging them in their cities, cutting off their food supply, raping and killing them, leaving them so hungry for food that they would eventually end up roasting their children in the fire, Deuteronomy 28, 15 through 68.

As revolting as all of that sounds to the modern ear, that is exactly the kind of disasters that befell Judah when Rome invaded in AD 70. And it's prophesied all the way back as far as Deuteronomy 28.

You see, in Malachi-like fashion and in Deuteronomic zeal, Jesus came to Jerusalem to forecast their doom. The culmination of all of God's covenantal fury was soon to descend upon that nation, destroying the root and the branch of Jesse through covenantal cursing, Malachi 4, 1 through 2.

In Matthew chapter 21 and 22, we see Jesus coming to the city with prophetic fire, but the people refused to repent. Now, this week, we're gonna be in Matthew 23, where we see Jesus's righteous indignation boiling over to a point of combustion, and the hard-hearted people stand firm in their rebellion, which is gonna lead to their demise, the curse of his coming.

Matthew 23 and the Sevenfold Curse

Now, it's important to remember two things as we approach Matthew 23. First, no time has elapsed between chapter two and chapter 23. Just a few seconds prior to this pronouncement of seven woes, Jesus is indicting the Jews as God's enemies in need of God's judgment, Matthew 22, 44.

The second thing that's important for us to understand is that this sevenfold curse is the covenantal pattern of judgment that God established in Deuteronomy 28. In that original curse motif, two sets of seven cursings were issued as warnings to the people that would cover both an exile and an annihilation if necessary.

Now, after centuries of post-exilic rebellion, meaning that from the exile in the Old Testament until now, there's been centuries of rebellion, God is now visiting his people with the terrifying woes that are set out in Deuteronomy through Jesus's final set of seven curses that he speaks over them today.

In Jesus's first curse that he issues, he condemns the Jewish aristocracy for allowing people, God's people, to fall into spiritual ruin, which is akin to spiritual abuse, Matthew 23, 13 -14. The second is that they're cursed for creating a leadership development pipeline which churns out more and more enthusiastic abusers, men who are more zealous to wound the people of God and spread their hellish errors than the generation even before, Matthew 23, 15.

Third, this is a big one, they've become so morally blind that they worship the trappings of their religion, putting their hope in the temple and the altar instead of the God who occupied and sanctified those things, Matthew 23, 16 -22.

Fourth, Jesus reveals that they are infatuated with themselves and their traditions instead of obeying God with humility and truth, Matthew 23, 23 -24. Fifth, because of this, they have become so entirely unclean, both inside and out, that they are morally ruined, Matthew 23, 25 -26.

It says that they appear to be righteous, the sixth woe, but being spiritually rotten and dead from the inside out, they are inauthentic to say the least, Matthew 23, 27 -28. And seventh and finally, Jesus reminds them that they are the ones who've killed the prophets, they are the ones who have spurned the commands of God, who have ignored the covenant, and they are the ones who are in league with their father, the devil, Matthew 23, 29 -33.

In exasperation, Jesus cries out to them, fill up the measure of the guilt of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? The sad reality is that they were incapable of escaping the full cup of God's wrath because their actions filled it up.

And that wrath will be poured out not only in this life, but in the life to come, a cursed generation. Now, just moments before Jesus leaves the city of Jerusalem for the final time, he utters a haunting prophecy that will be expanded for us in Matthew 24, and it will come true within the life of that generation.

He tells them, he prophesies about the city of Jerusalem that this nation is going to be brought into utter ruin by Almighty God, and he also prophesies that the Jerusalem temple, the pride of the nation, the place where the sacrifices are offered and where God supposedly dwells, that temple would be permanently left empty, officially ending the entire Old Covenant Mosaic era.

I want you to notice what Jesus says to the people who for centuries have killed and abused God's prophets. It says, therefore, verse 34, behold, I am sending you prophets, I am sending you wise men and scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall all the guilt of the righteous blood that is shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

Therefore, truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. Jesus prophesied that a very small window of opportunity is going to open up just before the great disasters occur. For 40 years, a quick season in light of human history, 40 years is gonna open up for the people of Judah, where Jesus is gonna send them prophets, wise men, disciples, apostles, missionaries, and evangelists from his new covenant people called the church, who are gonna go to the old covenant Jews and call them to repentance.

That is what the book of Acts is all about. The book of Acts is the ministry to the Jewish nation who are being called to repent because their timeline is 40 years, and if they don't repent then, the destruction is coming.

And in response to such a generous and merciful call from God, the Jews turn on the early church with unrelenting hatred and persecution, becoming the single greatest opponent that Christianity has ever faced.

They kill the Christians, they scourge them, bruise them, abuse them, and they become the greatest enemy of Christ, which will lead to their downfall. Once the final sand falls through that hourglass of that 40-year period, God will empty the cup of his covenantal fury once and for all upon that generation.

Remember, he has said, all these things will come upon this generation. He says that all of his anger since Cain killed Abel, all of the anger that had been stored up in the cup of his wrath, in some way or another, is gonna be poured out on them.

Just as Adam became the head of every reprobate man, Judah is covenantally to become the head of every reprobate nation. On that generation, every one of God's furies would fall, a cursed desolation. The second part of Jesus' prophecy was the desolation of the Jewish temple.

Jerusalem Left Desolate

After Jesus sobs over the cursed state of the city of Jerusalem, Jesus proclaims that their house is gonna be left to them desolate. This would have been perhaps the most shocking thing that Jesus has ever spoken to them since he already identified how they loved the house more than they loved its God, Matthew 23, 16 through 22.

Jesus says to them, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which is his way of saying, I love you. Whenever you repeat someone's name in that time period, it would be a term of intimacy. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.

How often I have wanted to gather your children together like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. For I say to you from now on, you will not see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

There's two things here that are utterly striking that we need to understand about this statement. The first word that's used here for house most certainly refers to the Jerusalem temple. The temple was the most significant building within the covenant city of Jerusalem.

And it was that house where God promised to make his dwelling known. You can see 2 Chronicles 29, 16, Ezra 7, 20, Daniel 5, 23, and Matthew 12, 14, sorry, Matthew 12, 4 for an example of how house is used to refer to the temple.

So when Jesus declares that desolations are coming upon that house, he is prophesying the imminent destruction of the Jerusalem temple. You can look at Matthew 24 for a more detailed account. The second word that is incredibly important for us to understand here is that Jesus does not attribute ownership of the temple to God.

He tells them that your house is gonna be left to you desolate, which can mean nothing other than God no longer dwells there. He's likely reminding the people that God's Shekinah glory had departed long ago.

You can see Ezekiel 10. And that the Jerusalem temple at this point was nothing more than a national trophy dedicated to a bygone era. Had the people been seeking God as the law required, they would have probably noticed that he was gone, but they didn't because they were blind guides, hypocrites, Jesus says.

So as Jesus leaves the temple mount, the real presence of God left with him was a trauma so that the temple from that moment forward was completely abandoned. Conclusion, the prophecies of Malachi, the sermons of John the Baptist and Jesus and the events of Matthew 21 through 23 have set a very deliberate and unavoidable context that we must not ignore.

The Coming Judgment on Covenant-Breaking Judah

God is coming in judgment against rebellion and this covenant breaking Judah and that city-burning, temple-crushing judgment is gonna happen in their lifetime, in that generation. Like the generation whose dead bodies lie in the wilderness floor in the book of Numbers, the generation who killed God's son is going to be shut out of God's new covenant kingdom.

And they're gonna pay mightily for not only killing Jesus, but for killing the ones that he sent to them to call them to repentance. That is the context that you and I must understand when we approach Matthew chapter 24, which is probably one of the most misunderstood chapters in all of the Bible.

As you and I are gonna see in the weeks ahead, Jesus does not switch away from this very clear focus on the destruction of Jerusalem to talk about future raptures, antichrist, tribulations and events that are happening thousands of years in his future, he just doesn't.

In Matthew 24, Jesus will give the most specific and frightening prophecy that has ever been uttered against that city. And it flows immediately out of the context of Matthew 21, 22 and 23. Over the next several weeks, we're gonna explore that great end times passage called Matthew 24.

And in a sense, that's what we've been building towards. I didn't wanna just take you to Matthew 24 and then start trying to defend the position. I wanted you to see the context because once you see the context, you'll never be able to unsee it again.

And you'll realize what Jesus is actually referring to in Matthew 24 instead of what all the end times doomsayers and doom and gloomers have been saying. They're wrong. The context of the Bible proves it and we'll explore this next week.

But until next time. God bless you.